Can Breakthrough Innovation Cure All Problems?

Inspiration

Today I am excited to be starting my new 10-week series as a part of the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator series. The infectious energy and passion of the 200 creators in this cohort is seen to be believed [It is very hard to keep up with our cohort's whatsapp group which has several 100 messages every day.]. I am very inspired by all the creators. I would urge all of you to follow #LICreatorAccelerator for some fantastic insights cutting across a wide variety of topics from Job Seeking, Sales, Digital Marketing, Branding, Comedy/Humour, Storytelling, Life Coaches, Transformation, Health & Fitness, Sustainability, Fintech, Financial Planning, Content in Hindi, Communication Skills..... [almost every major topic, you can think of, is covered].

Secrets of Digital Disruptors Series

My series is titled "Secrets of Digital Disruptors" [Also the title of my well-received keynote speech I have been making for a while now]. My goal is to reach 10,000 people especially in middle to senior management who can drive breakthrough innovation within their scope of work. Please request your friends & colleagues to follow this 10-week series #secretsofdigitaldisruptors . I will be posting 4 times a week per Linkedin's guidance.

Breakthrough Innovation Cures All Problems

In the startup world, one famous adage is "Revenue cures all problems" - you can see this even in the big firms where people who bring the revenue have the most power. Over the last 20+ years working in the field of Innovation, I am very convinced that - Breakthrough Innovations Can Cure All Problems [Not all breakthroughs are disruptive innovations hence using the broader term].

If you are trying to solve a problem (in your scope of work), use breakthrough innovation methods and you will be pleasantly surprised by the results.

$1B+ Business Impact Twice

I have been very lucky to lead two teams that created $1B+ transformations in parallel during my career at Cognizant :

• We had done control group studies in the Innovation Group that showed that work groups scoring very high on Innovation also scored very high on employee engagement scores [Part of the Managed Innovation initiative that produced a $1B+ business impact - some details in this short video]
• In my other job as the Global CIO we cut employee attrition from 8% above company average to below 5% [significantly low for an internal IT dept in a prof IT services firm where most people prefer to work in client projects] pursuing breakthrough innovation through digital technologies [My short video on that topic is here ]

Adding to that experience, I and my fellow mentors at Tiny Magiq have enabled 2,500+ people from diverse industries with our patent-pending breakthrough innovation techniques. Using our methods, our program participants (our mentees as we call them) have created over $40M+ business impact for their organizations and their customers.

I have quoted Peter Drucker in the cover image of this article [ Drucker is thought to be one of the all-time-great management thinkers]. I now believe that, we can bring breakthrough approaches to Marketing also, thereby making Breakthrough Innovation a foundational capability that we need to cultivate in ourselves and in our respective scope of work/organizations. Further the digital revolution is making it easier for any org of any scope or size to attempt a breakthrough innovation using digital.

Why doesn't everyone embrace breakthrough innovation methods?

If this whole thing about breakthrough innovation is true, why aren't many people attempting to do breakthrough innovations? My educated guess is that there are several unanswered questions in people's minds about breakthrough innovation [digital transformation/disruption included]. I have designed this series to answer those unanswered questions.

What are those unanswered questions from your personal perspective? While I may not have answers to all the questions, we can all be in a journey together over the next 10 weeks to answer those? Please join me on this journey with your active participation.

Unanswered Questions Starter List

To get the list of unanswered questions going, I will give a few that I sourced some from my fellow mentors and friends:

1. Given the day-to-day work pressures that I and my team have, how can I tackle something as ambitious as a breakthrough innovation?
2. In my line of work, with limited resources, is a breakthrough innovation like an ipod, iphone, light bulb etc even possible to do?
3. My suggestions to my org in the past, even those that I considered pretty good, didn't gain traction. Why would this be any different?